


Listen to Your Auntie Alice

by Shamhat



Series: A Word From The Sidelines [2]
Category: Twilight
Genre: Alice is a COOL aunt, Gen, Regular Teenager Bella Swan, Stand Alone, she’s a real cool old lady in the body of a youth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27524422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamhat/pseuds/Shamhat
Summary: “Alice leans back and smiles as she sees it all stretch out in front of her like an open road. Not Bella. Bella’s gift is being undetectable it would seem. She sees enough.”Alice tells Bella about one of her futures without Edward.
Relationships: Alice Cullen & Bella Swan
Series: A Word From The Sidelines [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011699
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Listen to Your Auntie Alice

Alice sits Bella on a log with a thermos of mint tea. They watch fat clouds pass over the moon. They are far enough away now. They’d passed over streams and over treetops, they’d vampire-skitched on passing big rigs. Bella had cackled like a wild thing, death as impossible and far off for a teenager as it was for an immortal.

Bella sips the tea and Alice says, “Close your eyes. Imagine for a moment, just a moment, that you dump my stupid brother. I’m not joking. Just try it. Good.” Alice says.

Bella has a little furrow in her brow. The night air blows her hair against her face until her nose scrunches with the effort not to sneeze.

  
“My brother’s gift is mind reading. Mine is clairvoyance. Do you want to know what your future will look like without him?”

  
“You don’t want me to date him,” Bella says, opening her eyes.

  
“It’s not a threat. In this instance, Bella, you are not the one anyone has designs on threatening. Come on, you’ll love it, it’s pretty good.”

Bella shrugs, and says “Sure.” And as unsure as she is, she closes her eyes.

Alice leans back and smiles as she sees it all stretch out in front of her like an open road. Not Bella. Bella’s gift is being undetectable, it would seem. She sees enough.

A house by the beach decorated with deliberate carefulness.

Gathered photographs and mementos on every wall.

Fascinating artifacts on slightly dusty shelves.

Old well-loved jokes are in the air, memories of road trips and magic.  
  
Friends, closer than family laughing over rosé and cards on the floor of the living room.

A world opened once when she was young and never closed again.

Werewolves, though Alice couldn’t recommend them, grilling up far too many burgers at a late hour and putting them all away.

A witch’s familiar sits on a wolf’s shoulder.

The tipsy witch in question holds out a sprig of red blooming rosemary to someone out of view.

A Greenman is drunk and laughing. He lays back on a dining table and draws new leaves out from the old wood.

There is a place at the center, left open. 

“It’s only a possibility of course, but damn,” Alice says.

  
“There’s more than just vampires?” Bella’s eyes are wide with a child’s wonder. She clasps the cup of tea to her chest.

  
“Bella, the world is ginormous. There’s more than exists in that little tableau.”

“I think I’m falling in love with him.” She says like a confession.

  
“Yeah, makes sense. He looks like that. He acts as though he’s tortured somehow when he just doesn’t have any hobbies. Immortality is wasted on some people.” She grins. “Anyway, like I said, if you keep your eyes open the world won’t stop being weird and interesting. A quartz old man with the charisma of a haunted doll isn’t the most exciting thing that’ll ever happen to you. That’s not a prediction. That’s lived experience. Here’s the most important bit, Bella, the first time you fall in love won't be the last.”

  
“Does he do this a lot? Make girls feel like this?” She drowns whatever she’s feeling in tea.

“Honestly, no. We genuinely don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s going through something and he’s dragging you into it.”

“Maybe I could help,” Bella says, young, and open-hearted, and brave.

  
“That is not your job.”

“But, he’s my friend. I should try to help him.”

  
Alice thinks about her response very carefully. “He’ll be fine. He has an eternity to figure himself out. You have, I don’t know upwards of 80 years (not a prediction). Spending your life trying to fix _his_ , when he’s been at it longer than you’ve been alive isn’t going to do you any favors. Oh shit.”

“What?” Bella said suddenly, sitting bolt upright at the tone in Alice’s voice.

  
“Did you do the history essay on the economic impact of the war in Vietnam?”

  
“Alice, you lived through the 70s.”

  
“On a remote farm training sheepdogs, Bella. It’s a grey area.”

Bella laughs. “Do you want to cheat off my work? Didn’t someone say you’d graduated High School a bunch of times?”

  
“Life is long, homework is so little of it.”

  
“I don’t know, you’ve been going to high school longer than I’ve been alive,” Bells says. “I hear I shouldn’t spend my life trying to fix your problems.”

“You’re a little twerp,” Alice says.

“My vampire boyfriend’s vampire sister takes me out in the woods to give me my own shovel talk, then asks me for my history notes.” Bella says.

“See? Lots of fun stuff happens without Edward around to cry all over it.”

“Tell me about the dogs.”

  
Alice leans back languorously on her elbows and says, “Oh Bella, let me tell you about the dogs.”

**Author's Note:**

> More to come!


End file.
